Anchoring/Ground Tackle
by Kate and Hamish Laird

10 February, at anchor, Abacos, Bahamas,
In dread of dragging for having the hubris to write this article...

	Our sister-in-law Emma Ellis with the crushed 80-pound Manson anchor after the iceberg floated off it at the next spring tide.

SEAL is a 56' cutter, with a pilothouse, which gives her moderately high windage and moderate displacement for shockloading. Our main anchor is a 105-pound CQR and 300' of G-40 7/16 chain, with an oversized link at the anchor end so we can fit a 3/4" shackle. (Regular sized chain links can only take the next size up shackle, which, when you're using G-40, makes the shackle the weakest link in the system.)

As a backup and a breast hook, we have a 47-pound aluminum Fortress FX-85 (Danforth type) anchor on 50' of 1/2" chain and 150' of 7/8" three strand nylon.

We're in the market for a 150-pound fisherman/Luke--anyone got a second hander on the East Coast of the US?--we have the 5/8" chain and 600' feet of 7/8" three-strand nylon to go with it.

The most important part of our system, though we haven't used it much lately, are 4 spools on deck with 600' each of 3/4" three-strand Sampson polypropelene--this is invaluable in the Antarctic for tying up in small inlets without swinging room. We also use it for tying up to piers in places with high tidal ranges.

We have a 7/16" Devil's claw from Best Marine Imports, to hold our snubber--it is very kind on the chain, but in the past we've also gotten away with just doing rolling hitches to the chain. We have 1 1/4" mega braid sitting in a locker somewhere for a single part snubber (good if we were really pitching, because it would roll on the bow roller), but for everyday use we tie two docking lines (7/8" nylon) to the Devil's Claw and tension them equally through the two forward fairleads with heavy-duty chafe gear. This allows us to keep the chain in the roller, not rattling down the hull. Should the snubber lines chafe through, the chain is on the roller and in the bitts, ready to go. We use the snubber almost every time we anchor (to cut down on the noise, even in relatively calm weather).

The last part of the anchoring system is a 24-volt DC Lewmar 3000 Windlass and a custom-made stainless steel "bitts" that we use as a chain lock (to take the load off the windlass once we are anchored). In order to have the 60-100 amps the windlass requires, we need to have an engine on, either the main engine or the DC genset. Should we not have power, we can crank it up with the primary winches (manual Lewmar 64s) using shore lines or spring lines tied to the chain with rolling hitches.

Seal at the dock in Durham, NH before we fitted the mast. Three lines ashore (one using all of our 600 feet), the CQR off the bow, and the Fortress off the port bow.

We choose the diameters in the time-honored way of going into the local fishing supply shop and running the chain and line through our fingers: This looks right.

Later, I calculated the theoretical loads on a 55' moderate windage sailboat at 60 knots and 120 knots. Using the ABYC figures for load (I've read a lot on wind loads, and there is NO agreement on how much load is on ground tackle at anchor, so this may be just an intellectual exercise), I found our set up has its working load at 60 knots and its breaking load at 120 knots. Just about right. At anything much above 70, one is going to have the motor on, driving into it if possible. We've sat at anchor in South Georgia (on 7/16" chain and an 80-pound Manson) in 65-knot winds, and had gusts into the 60s many times at anchor near Cape Horn. A friend has seen 96 knots at anchor in the Falkland Islands (he had the motor on.) Hurricanes are another story entirely, and not one we know anything about.

We almost always use a single hook--no tangle, no fuss, but it does take a lot of space. And we use the CQR. CQRs seem to be the second-best anchor in almost all bottom conditions, and do very well if they're a bit on the heavy side (ours is very much on the heavy side, given our choice of cruising grounds). They store well on bow rollers, reset very well, and we've had a great experience with them on many different boats.

	SEAL's bitts: The chain locks between the two lower bars and a turn around the bitts keeps it from jumping out. The top of the bitts can be used for shore lines or another anchor.

The main exception is when we tie lines ashore. The first style is "Mediterranean Moor"--we check the depth near the beach, then go out and drop the hook offshore and reverse back in to the point where we can tie two stern lines to trees or rocks ashore. The second style is a "spider's web." We often start off with the anchor down to stabilize the boat, and motor astern to hold our position while we run four lines ashore to rocks or trees from the dinghy. If there's a danger of icebergs coming in, we try to do it without the anchor, after having an 80-pound Manson (CQR-style) crushed by an iceberg in Antarctica. The berg came in at two in the morning and sat on the anchor before we could get it up. We slipped the chain and slid out around the berg, but we couldn't retrieve the anchor until the next spring tides, and even then, it was crushed and useless (the chain was fine.)

Without a windlass on my 28-footer, the most I could handle was a 35-pound CQR with 65 feet of 5/16" chain and 200 feet of 1/2" nylon. It was an everyday rig, storm rig, chain and snubber in one, and it worked very well without wearing me out or destroying my back. (In "The Complete Book of Anchoring and Mooring," Earl Hinz suggests that boats be set up to have the capability of anchoring in depths equivalent to their overall length--which seems to be a very useful standard.)

You'll probably notice that the weights of anchors we use are well above what shows on the marine catalog charts. In that sense, we carry no "working anchor"--just a storm anchor that we use everyday. For Hamish this philosophy arose from working in Antarctica and Tierra del Fuego--one can expect 50 knots about once a week, so the 30-knot tables are meaningless. I came to the same conclusion, but not for the same reasons. I did most of my sailing in the near-calm winds of Maine--I was singlehanding and didn't want to think about what anchor to put down, or worse, have to change anchors if the winds came up unexpectedly. The problem with storm anchors is they are heavy and awkward and hard to deploy, but from the bow roller, it just takes a light kick--contrast that with wrestling 105 pounds in the dinghy as the winds rise. For 40-footers with a manual or no windlass, this may not be a practical route, but for a 28-footer, where the difference between a storm and a working anchor is 10 pounds--why bother with a working one? And for a 56-footer with a power windlass and big primary winches as backup, the difference is about 45 pounds, again not a figure worth worrying about (especially since your gear will have to be set up to deal with the storm anchor anyway).

You can learn more about the Lairds and SEAL at their website www.expeditionsail.com.